ALMS

Lime Rock: Dyson Racing race report

Dyson Team 2nd and 3rd at Lime Rock Misfortunes Cost Strong Shot at Home Track Victory LIME ROCK, CT, JULY 5, 2004 - Second place, third place and a lot of frustration was what Dyson Racing had to show at the conclusion of the first annual ...

Published: Jul 6, 2004, 10:46 PM

Copy link

Share on Viber

Add as a preferred source

Dyson Team 2nd and 3rd at Lime Rock
Misfortunes Cost Strong Shot at Home Track Victory

LIME ROCK, CT, JULY 5, 2004 - Second place, third place and a lot of frustration was what Dyson Racing had to show at the conclusion of the first annual New England Grand Prix at Lime Rock Park. Taking over the pole-winning #16 Thetford / Norcold Lola from James Weaver for the second half of the 2-hour, 45-minute American Le Mans Series race, Butch Leitzinger made a determined charge. But a lengthy yellow near the end of the race blunted his effort and left him 1.4 seconds behind the winning Audi R8 of JJ Lehto and Marco Werner.

"I was disappointed to see the yellow, " said Leitzinger, who was steadily chipping away at the Audi's lead over the last hour of the race. "And even more disappointed to see how long it took to go green again. I believe I could have caught him otherwise, and with the way traffic was, I think I would have had a shot at getting by him."

But a couple of its own miscues cost the team as well. A gamble on rain tires shortly after the start of the race turned out to be a bad one when the rain shower ended abruptly, costing Weaver the lead and dropping the #16 car a lap off the pace. "It was my call," Weaver said afterwards. "I'm driving several hundred thousand dollars worth of kit, and it seemed the right thing to do at the time. As it turned out, I was wrong. But hindsight is 20/20."

Team owner Rob Dyson promised that "from now on we'll have access to Doppler radar, so we'll know when it starts raining if it's just a shower blowing through or a big rain."

In the end, a minor problem for the Audi put the #16 car back on the lead lap, but the event that ultimately cost the Dyson team the race occurred when both cars failed to restart promptly following routine pit stops. (ALMS rules require that the engine be shut down during refueling.)

"If we hadn't had that problem, the #16 car would have been a lap up on the Audi and the yellow wouldn't have mattered," said Chris Dyson, who paired with Andy Wallace in the #20 Thetford / Norcold Lola to finish third.

According to team manager Randall Kelsey, the issue began to surface last week at Mid-Ohio, following changes in formulation of the ALMS-mandated race fuel. "We didn't have any problems with restarting at Sebring or during any of our testing. Our partners at Advanced Engine Research are going to test a sample of the fuel and make whatever adjustments are necessary in our engine management system to take care of the problem."

And though disappointed with the final result, Leitzinger did note that the second-place finish represented a substantial improvement over the results last week at the ALMS race at Mid-Ohio, where a broken oil-pump drive knocked out the #16 pole-winner car before the green flag. "We're getting some momentum here," he said, thinking ahead to the next race on the ALMS schedule at Sonoma, Calif. Leitzinger and Weaver won there last year. "We're definitely looking forward to Sonoma," he said. "It should be another good track for us."

-dr-

We want your opinion!

What would you like to see on Motorsport.com?

Take our 5 minute survey.

- The Motorsport.com Team

Read and post comments

Share Or Save This Story

Copy link

Share on Viber

Previous article Lime Rock: Round three race report

Next article GT standings after Lime Rock

Top Comments

There are no comments at the moment. Would you like to write one?

View More & Comment

Latest news

Alex Bowman hits out at critics in snarky post, shooting down early exit rumors

NASCAR Cup

NAS NASCAR Cup

Homestead-Miami

4 h

Alex Bowman hits out at critics in snarky post, shooting down early exit rumors

Ryan Blaney gets sweet redemption after 'nightmares' following 2024 Homestead loss

NASCAR Cup

NAS NASCAR Cup

Homestead-Miami

4 h

Ryan Blaney gets sweet redemption after 'nightmares' following 2024 Homestead loss

IndyCar 2026 season review: Dale Coyne Racing

IndyCar

Indy IndyCar 5 h

IndyCar 2026 season review: Dale Coyne Racing

Noah Gragson apologizes to Daniel Suarez for spinning him at Homestead

NASCAR Cup

NAS NASCAR Cup

Homestead-Miami

5 h

Noah Gragson apologizes to Daniel Suarez for spinning him at Homestead

Subscribe and access Motorsport.com with your ad-blocker.

From Formula 1 to MotoGP we report straight from the paddock because we love our sport, just like you. In order to keep delivering our expert journalism, our website uses advertising. Still, we want to give you the opportunity to enjoy an ad-free and tracker-free website and to continue using your adblocker.

You have 2 options:

Become a subscriber.
Disable your adblocker.

Subscribe now Already subscribed? Sign in here

Already disabled your adblocker?
Reload page

Manage Alerts